


fit for a slayer

by theredhoodie



Series: the weight of a soul [1]
Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Blood and Violence, Canon Divergence, F/M, Post Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-17
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-21 12:02:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2467598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredhoodie/pseuds/theredhoodie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate is a goddess in battle, blood smearing across her features, and the fierce light that she exhibits seeps out around her, lighting her to the tips of her fingers and the end of every strand of hair. Next to Richie, a prince of darkness who enters battle with such a brutality that none live to tell the tale, she shines so brightly. When they stand over the remains of their enemies on the battlefield, the ground is alight with the flaming remains of the twice dead and they only have eyes for each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fit for a slayer

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this started just by coming across these awesome flexible rapiers from the 17th-19th century and a tiny ficlet bloomed into this mess!
> 
> Which isn't quite a mess, thanks to my awesome little beta Jessie, silenceisnotmyfriend here on AO3, who made my little piece of this FDTD world so much more emotional and dramatic.
> 
> Now with a [FANMIX](http://8tracks.com/theredhoodie/fit-for-a-slayer)

“Ah, those two. In a fight, they’re lethal. Around each other, they melt.” 

-Richelle Mead

* * *

 

Oh, if her momma could see her now. She always told Kate to be strong when she was little, when she was growing up. _Be strong, Katie,_ she would say. _It’s important for you to be strong._ Kate found her strength in many ways; first through her parents’ love, then through her faith, which helped her steadily through awkward teenage years, and finally, she let her strength come from herself. From that light she held within herself, the one that everyone could see. The one that always seemed to attract creatures that lurked in the night.

“They want to snuff out your soul, Kate,” she tells herself before every fight, even if she is confronted by a surprise attack. “What’re you gonna do about it?”

She fights, that’s what she does. She faces down the demons and she fights. The way she moves in the night, weapons just extensions of her own limbs, one would think she was a reincarnation of Joan of Arc. The fierce light that she exhibits seeps out around her, lighting her to the tips of her fingers and the end of every strand of hair. She likes to think that she’s something like an avenging angel—come to strike down the masses of evil crawling their way out of the hellholes where they’ve been simmering in their bloodlust.

Usually, she’s not alone. Seth is by her side more often than not, and he’s a heavier fighter. His movements have less fluidity than hers. Like his entire persona and attitude, his strikes are brash and forward, spewing blood all over the both of them.

When they stand over the remains of their enemies on the battlefield, the ground is alight with the flaming remains of the twice dead. Sometimes the moon is just a sliver in the sky above them, but sometimes it’s enormous, taking up more of the sky than the sun ever could. It bathes them in light like a blessing and Kate feels her strength blossom and grow under her skin.

While they rid the underworld of its foulest demons, Richie makes his appearances, more a prince of hell than one of the vermin scrabbling around for scraps. They never know when he’ll show up, but when it does, it’s in a burst of brutality. His hands do more damage than Kate’s ever could, ripping jaws and heads right off of shoulders while she can’t take down even the weakest of them without a weapon.

He doesn’t let her feel worthless, not the way he half ignores Seth and always goes to Kate first, smearing the blood on her face with the blood on his own hands. Neither of them care nor notice enough to care.

“You fight like you were born for this,” he says with that same sleekness that has become his natural tone since he became a culebra. “They never stand a chance.”

Kate rolls her eyes and slips her equally bloody fingers around his wrists. She knows just how wrong this actually is, her attachment to Richie, especially with Seth cursing off in the corner trying to dislodge a machete from the hard packed desert floor. Seth is the one always by her side; Richie just comes and goes. But when he’s there, Kate swears the stars align and everything snaps into focus.

The blood smeared across his lips that drips down his chin and neck doesn’t repulse her. Not even when he always dips in for a sticky, lingering kiss before he disappears again to Santanico’s side, leaving Kate to lick culebra blood off her lips and wonder when she became a mistress of the night.

  
  
8  


Seth leaves because they’re out of cash and he has to try to sweet talk his ex into giving some of her four million to him. Kate just wants him gone, because the more he talks about Vanessa the more her stomach twists and knots. Whenever he talks about her, his face becomes this sweet mask that she’s never seen before, not even with her. All Kate sees in his face is the cool, totally cool Seth Gecko, bank robber, kidnapper and reluctant culebra slayer. Not a husband.

He empties his pockets for her and leaves her in a hotel room in the morning. He walks out into the sunlight that it envelops him before the door cuts him off from her view. Kate wonders if she’ll ever see him again—if this is a parting in their stories forever. It isn’t like the blur of the past year is forgotten the moment he leaves her.

Richie isn’t the only Gecko to have tasted her preacher’s daughter’s lips and drink in her light. They were mostly drunken nights, but Kate never liked the feeling of being drunk so she feigned it and succumbed to Seth’s advances because she knew that she desired a closeness that Richie wasn’t willing to give.

She has nothing now but Seth’s jacket, the rest of his money, and a smattering of drunken kisses and the ghosts of hands roaming over her skin from the night before.

 

8

 

Kate is fine. She’s strong. She’s always been strong. She’s been growing stronger and stronger every day, with every fight, with every new motel lobby she passes through, and under the hundreds of moons that have graced the sky since she began her life as a culebra slayer.

But, some nights, she allows herself to feel a little vulnerable. So when her mind starts to wonder about what Scott, about _pre-kidnapping-and-pre-culebra_ Scott, would think of her calling herself a slayer, she allows the melancholy to seep into her bones. With Seth gone, there’s no warm body in the other bed to crawl beside and situate herself against for comfort. She has nothing but some cheap and bitter wine and five hundred dollars to her name.

  
  
8

 

In the eleven months, two weeks and four days since Kate killed her first culebra with a chainsaw in the dark and musty remains of the Titty Twister, she has never frozen during a fight. The light within her soul, the strength from her faith, shining brightly around her throat in a golden chain—they all fuel her in battle. She might be a sinner in her daddy’s eyes, but to her, she’s doing the work of angels, ridding the Earth of the unnatural, the undead.

She’s so sure of herself that she walks alone at night just to gain a rush from the adrenaline. She knows that the beasts are attracted to her very soul. Her petite size and youth paint her to be an easy target. But she is not weak.

Some nights, she wears Seth’s jacket and hides weapons beneath it, and some nights she sets traps and guides the culebra to the perfect place for an execution, her weapons awaiting. Unlike Seth, who preferred simple stakes, the occasional machete, and a good old-fashioned gun, Kate always goes for the bigger weapons. The grim reaper scythes, swords like cruel words with cutting steel; she can wield any of them. She and her body have long since grown used to their heft, and the effort it takes to swing them towards her prey.

Tonight, she’s got Seth’s jacket, machete hidden beneath, pressed against her back, and a few sharp stakes and smaller knives dragging down each side. The half-moon floats in and out of clouds, but it does nothing for the heat; even with the sun tucked away, the day’s warmth still remains.

She hears rustling behind her, keeps her heartbeat steady. She knows the drill. She knows what to do. She keeps walking on, like she can’t hear them.

This isn’t a good place to fight—it’s a prime spot for an ambush—so she turns sharply and begins walking south. She makes it three steps before one of them pops up in front of her, an arm’s length away. Her eyes settle on the face in the dim light, and at the sight of it, her blood runs cold.

Her lips part and a single word slips out: “Scott?”

It’s _definitely_ her brother. Her recognition is mirrored back in his eyes, on his face. There is a hesitation on both their parts, but then Scott’s eyes shift to flat, coldness. Kate finds herself suddenly outnumbered. One of the culebra behind her yanks her arms back painfully, taking her by surprise. The yelp that escapes her reverberates off the stucco brick walls of the nearby alley.

“You really shouldn’t have come out tonight, Kate,” Scott says. His voice so different it shocks her. Richie, human or culebra, feels the same, actsthe same, but Scott? It’s like he is an entirely different person, a _thing_ wearing her brother’s face. 

The fear and confusion that she knows is evident on her face doesn’t get through to him. She’s standing still, trying to imagine what her daddy would say, how sad he would be to see how Scott gave up on himself and how Kate is so easily accepting of death—because this is _Scott_. Because she knows that’s what happens if you let your guard down around culebra.

You get dead and that’s all there is to it.

She can’t think of anything to say. No words come to mind—nothing that can make him react, nothing that can make the look in his eyes soften and the fangs recede. She’s never felt so weak and useless, never before in her life, and even the pain in her arms can't barter a fight out of her—because it’s Scott. It’s her _brother_.

Scott doesn’t say anything either, but his eyes, still human, flicker to the culebra behind her. She can see others circling around in the darkness, slinking in the shadows. She can’t stand up straight or square her shoulders. Even with the weapons weighing down Seth’s jacket pockets, she can’t do anything.

There’s a familiar sound of shifting flesh, and the hiss of a transformed culebra in her ear. She wants to close her eyes and just accept her fate, but something in her—the lights, it’s gotta be the light—keeps her eyes open and focused on her brother.

The culebra doesn’t have the decency to even pull her hair back. Kate fills her lungs and feels just the scrape of hollow fangs against her skin before it’s gone and the beast is wrenched back, freeing her. She whirls around and sees Richie, the culebra who had nearly bitten her ripped in half and turning to dust and flames at his feet. The ring of culebra around them all hiss and transform at the sight of him. Kate is fueled with something more at the sight of Richie diving into a fight.

She doesn’t know how many culebra there are, but she whips out a stake and uses her small size to her advantage and takes down three of them by sheer force of aggravation and frustration at herself for freezing up, for nearly _giving up_ and allowing her brother to be the one to orchestrate the end of her life. She knows he’s slunk off into the darkness, and she _knows_. He is a coward. Unable to pull the trigger when he’s got a gun pointed at Richie’s head, unable to face the choice of having another end her life, unable to fight—

“Kate.” Through her ringing ears, Kate hears her name and the distant sound like a rattler shaking its tail. She turns around and Richie’s lost his princeof darkness face and he’s just Richie. Just Richie. “What are you doing? Where’s Seth?”

He sounds angry, but he doesn’t have that explosive, palpable anger like Seth has. Kate shakes the blood off the end of her stake and puts the thing back in its hiding spot in her jacket—Seth’s jacket—before looking back up at him.

Richie stands directly in front of her. She didn’t even hear him move, and all she can see is that he’s covered in more blood than usual.

“He left,” Kate says, the words barely audible—less than a whisper in the moonlight. She clears her throat and repeats them. “Seth left. He ran back to Vanessa for money—or something.” She shrugs it off like it hadn’t felt like a punch to the gut, like him leaving hadn’t left her wandering around Mexico alone. Her only kindred soul in this forsaken country is standing right in front of her, and he can’t be with her for more than a short, bloody time. He has to keep up appearances with Santanico, but Kate wonders how long that will last.

Richie skips over the anger directed toward his brother and goes straight to comforting her. His large hands slip over her cheeks, smearing crimson against her skin. “Are you okay?” he asks, in that uninhibitedly emotional tone that she’s only heard directed towards her.

She nods against his touch and she wants to lean in—to just collapse against him and close her eyes, but she doesn’t want to ruin one of her last wearable outfits. “Stay with me a while?” she asks quietly, stepping as close as she dares and looking up at him. He looks so different without his glasses.

Sometimes, he wears them when he comes swooping into battle when they need him the most, just to appease her. She doesn’t know what’s different about tonight. She can’t think of a reason.

Something like tension dances across his features, like he wants to say _yes_ but knows he shouldn’t ,and she waits. “I shouldn’t,” he says finally, even though she knows every part of his body is saying the opposite of what’s coming out of his mouth. His thumbs brush over her stained cheeks, and he’s leaning closer now. She thinks he’s doing it unintentionally, because his hands are still now, and his eyes have momentarily locked with hers.

“Please?” she asks. She’s not begging. She’s lost without Seth, without someone with her. She is a social creature. The life of loneliness is not a life she was made for, or can adapt to. Plus this is Richie and she always needs him. She always wishes she could see him for more than wonderful, bloodstained moments in the heat of battle and smothering copper kisses before he’s gone again.

Thinking of this, of remembering him always being gone, she says _fuck it_ to her clothes, shuffles her feet between his and puts her hands on his hips, his skin cool even though his shirt. The buckle of his belt digs into her stomach. 

He blinks, keeping his eyes closed for longer than necessary before he lets out a sigh and caves. She can feel his control drop under her fingertips. “Okay,” he says, swooping down to catch her breath between his lips. She digs her fingers into his sides and doesn’t let him go, fearing that he’s going to give her one last kiss and run if she doesn’t hold on tight.

She’s sunk her version of claws into him—she isn’t about to let him go. He kisses her like he’s meant every word he never said and every kiss they’ve shared since the Twister.

When she feels lightheaded and dizzy and breathes against his lips, pulling in fresh air for her starving lungs, she knows she’s got him. He’s not disappearing, not slinking off to do prince of the darkness things. He’s here. He stayed.

“C’mon,” he says, releasing her and making her sway. He grabs her hand and they hurry along back to her motel, the one that’s almost half as cheap as usual because there’s only one person and one bed and dried bloodstains in the bathroom. They’re not from Kate, and she doesn’t want to think of where they’ve come from. She just focuses on Richie.

 

8 

 

Kate never asks where Richie goes when he’s not checking in on her and killing culebra at her side, and she never asks how he know exactly where to find her each time. So, naturally, she doesn’t think of asking how he knows exactly which motel door to stop at.

It looks like every other motel room she and Seth have shared. The dim lights from beside the bed and over the bureau only illuminate it dimly. In this light, Kate can see how much blood Richie has on him. She has far less than usual, since stakes are a lot cleaner than the machetes and scythes she’s been without for the past few weeks, due to their cumbersome weight and their inability to remain hidden under her reaming plaid shirts. The first thing she does is shoulder off the jacket, letting it fall to the floor, under the covered window. The coat makes a dull _thud_ when it hits the carpet—she’s still got her knives and stakes weighing down all the pockets she could stuff them into.

“How long ago did Seth leave?” Richie asks, stepping aside when she passes him to go into the bathroom. The stain is there in the tub that was, in her defense, there before she was. Kate has been trying not to think about _Psycho_ the entire time she’s been in the room.

Kate turns on the water and glances at him in the mirror. He’s made himself comfortable in the doorway. “A few weeks ago,” she says, scrubbing her hands under the hot water. She then moves onto the soap, washing her hands and wrists first.

Richie visibly shifts and she looks up just in time to see him pull his infamous horn-rimmed glasses out of his jacket pocket and slip them onto his face, blood and all. He meets her eyes in the mirror before she looks down. “I can’t believe he just left you,” he says under his breath.

Kate shrugs and grabs a washcloth from the stack on the shelf above the toilet. She soaks it in water and rubs it with the bar of soap before scrubbing her cheeks and neck free of the blood smeared there by Richie’s hands. She doesn’t mind the blood, but that’s when they’re on their flaming battlefield of mangled and murdered culebra, not when she’s winding down from a terrible evening where she was confronted with a part of her past she has been trying to forget for the better part of a year.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he persists, when she doesn’t reply with words.

She cracks open an eye and looks at his reflection. She dips the cloth back to the sink and rinses it clean of soap before scrubbing over her face once again, leaving her skin tinged pink, but clean. “I saw Scott,” she says, turning around so she can face him. She looks up, tilting her head back, wishing he wasn’t covered in blood. “And I froze.” She raises her eyebrows ever so slightly and eases her way by him.

His eyes follow hers as she moves into the room and sits down on the end of the bed and plops back against the mattress, folding her hands above her stomach, her eyes searching the ceiling.

“You saw Scott?” Richie echoes. He moves into the bathroom now, cleaning off his own hands and arms after pulling off his jacket and folding up his shirtsleeves. There is nothing he can do about the red splatters on the white, but he can at least scrub his skin clean.

Kate turns her head and watches him from the odd angle. “Yeah,” she says softly. “He’s not like you." 

“What’d you mean?”

The poor hotel is going to be left with a pile of bloody towels by the time Kate finally left. She lets out a breath and presses her hands against her forehead. “I don’t know...he wasn’t like the Scott I grew up with. He was so _different_. And he was just gonna let those culebra eat me.” There’s a slight wobble in her tone that she squashes, pressing a wrist to her forehead and clenching her hands into fists, letting her nails bite into her palms.

“I’m sorry.” Richie walks out of the bathroom and into her direct line of sight. With the blood smudges on his shirt, his hair a bit disheveled, and those glasses, he looks just like the first time she saw him all those months ago, by the poolside at the Dew Drop Inn.

Kate pushes herself up onto her elbows and shakes her head. She wants to say it’s not his fault, but it is. She’s accepted that, but she can’t say the words. She can’t help but just look at him for a while in silence. She doesn’t know why he always wore those glasses around her, where he got the idea that she likes him better when he wears them—it’s not just an idea, she really _does_ love him with them on—and how he somehow always remembered to bring them when he came swooping in to save her and his brother.

He disappears once the air grows thick with unspoken words and comes back with his jacket, still sticky and damp from the battle. He sets it down on top of the wooden bureau and then turns to her, holding something in his hand. “Here,” he says, walking a little closer. Crouching down in front of her, he holds out his hand.

Kate sits up fully and takes what he offers. It’s small and heavy, cool metal against her skin. “What’s this?” she asks, turning the hoop around in her hands. It’s then that she notices that it’s not just a hoop, it’s a _snake_. Her heart jumps in her chest.

“It’s for you,” he says, like it’s that simple.

Kate lifts her head and meets his eyes, steely blue and hidden behind his glasses. “Where did you get this?”

He shrugs. “I stole it.”

She tries to fight it, but the corner of her lip twists up in a smirk, her own version of the Gecko smirk when they’ve gotten the best of someone. “Sticky fingers, huh?”

Richie bows his head and spread his hands slightly in front of him. “Guilty.”

It doesn’t take a genius to know that he swiped it off Santanico, or at least out of her things. The thought makes Kate feel even more powerful than when she has a scythe in her hand. “It’s pretty,” she says softly, pushing it over her knuckles and feeling out the weight of it hanging from her wrist.

“It’s old,” he says, running his fingers around the metal and pushing the armlet a little farther up her arm until it fit snuggly halfway between her wrist and elbow. “From Toledo, Spain. In the seventeen hundreds they made a lot of these, of all different sizes.”

Kate raises her eyebrows. “And you stole it just for me?” The hint of teasing in her tone does not go unnoticed.

Richie half smiles and moves his thumb along the metal to the snakehead. “You’re not afraid of snakes, are you?” He looks up, meeting her eyes.

Kate shakes her head. “No.” She so badly wants to forget about the snake bracelet, no matter how nice it was, and just kiss him and pull him onto the old mattress with her, but she doesn’t. She stays still.

“Good.” Eyes still on her, he moves his thumb with one sharp movement and it’s the slight sound of metal against metal that distracts Kate. She glances down to see the head of the snake and the blade attached to it. Richie slides the blade out of the bracelet. It’s thin—flexible enough to curve around in the ring. Kate is impressed, her mouth opening slightly in surprise. The blade is small, about eight inches long, but both sides of the blade are sharp and Kate can imagine the damage that could be done by slipping it between a culebra’s ribs. “What do you think?”

Kate lifts her other hand and takes the blade from his hand, resisting the urge to touch the edge to test its sharpness. Instead, she slides it back in and watches as the blade disappears completely and the snakehead fits perfectly in place. No one would ever know. “Wow,” she breathes out in awe. A year ago, the only gift that could render this response would be some form of ordinary jewelry, maybe diamond earrings or a diamond encrusted locket. But here she was, gaping over a dull steel circlet that expertly hid a lethal blade with its confines.

“I think it suits you,” Richie says, a little bit of smugness at his excellent steal seeping into his voice. He moves one hand farther up her arm, hooking his fingers behind her elbow. The other he lies against her knee and moves his hand up her thigh slowly.

“Does it?” she asks, moving the gift this way and that against her arm, still marveling over the fact that there was a tiny little sword hidden away inside. “Is it because of the irony? I bet I could kill a culebra if I stuck this through the right ribs at the right angle…” She trails off. Richie’s hand has made its way up to the juncture of her hip and his thumb is dangerously close to sinking between her thighs.

“Kate,” he prompts, and her eyes move from his hand to his face. In the back of her mind, she’s telling herself that this is the reason why he never came back with her. And it all kind of makes sense now.

She doesn’t flush, she controls herself and moves her hands to his face, careful not to tilt his glasses askew. “Thank you,” she says before she leans in and kisses him. She doesn’t hold back even though the familiar tang of copper is missing. She kisses him hard. His hand slides around her hip, the other hand at the small of her back. He leans against her in a struggle of who can kiss the hardest, even though they both know Richie will win. Kate takes in short breaths of air every chance she gets while everything gets blurred and moves to fast she can barely remember it ever happening. One second she’s sitting on the bed, and the next thing she knows, she’s being laid back on the mattress. Richie is hovering over her, sliding his tongue across her lips.

They’re both on the seedy old mattress that sinks down in the middle and Richie’s only half on top of her but she doesn't really care or think about it because she can still feel the weight of him sinking down the mattress, pressing along her right side. She weaves her fingers through his hair with one hand and scratches her nails down his back with the other, pulling at the shirt still very much attached to his form. She opens her lips, and in that moment, remembers her age because she feels like she’s drowning and doesn’t know how to swim. Thoughts like that slip away, though, when he presses his knee between her thighs and drags his fingers down her side in such a way that it sends wave after wave of chills over her skin.

Her fingers have found their way around his side and up his chest by the time he takes her bottom lip between his teeth and bites down—not brutally, but hard enough that she feels it and her eyes open in response, her nails sinking into his skin through the shirt. She can feel him smirk against her skin when his lips leave her and he presses his mouth against her jaw, her head tilting to the side, automatically. His hand slides to her hip and he pulls her against him, acquiring a gasp from Kate when he begins giving her open mouthed kisses down her neck. Her heart is loud in her ears. It pounds against the cage of her ribs like a bird trying to break free—it races every time a shiver rolls down her spine, every time he shifts a little and every time his teeth scrape against her skin.

This is dangerous. This is _oh-so-dangerous_ , but she’s never felt so alive before in her life, not ever, and she doesn’t want him to stop. She hardly knows what to do with herself, in that instance, and feels herself paling in comparison of how to make him feel as good as she is, but then again, she’s not a mind reader. He seems to be enjoying himself with the way he’s tempting fate by gently scraping his teeth against her skin, causing little sounds from somewhere deep inside her throat to make it past her lips against her will.

“ _Richie_ ,” she breathes his name like it’s a prayer, threading her fingertips through his hair before sliding them down to the base of his skull and letting them find a home amid the divots of his spine.

Her voice brings him to his senses, because he stops sliding his mouth along the moist trail he’s made on her skin, and removes his hand from her hip, sliding his palm against the side of her face. “Kate,” he returns, in the same way she said his name, lips a hairsbreadth away from hers. Before she can say anything—anything at all, to express the warmth she feels gathered in her chest, the chills running down her spine, and her racing heartbeat—he leans in and kisses her again. This time, it’s simple. It’s lingering, and it makes her heart twinge in her chest.

She makes a surprised noise in the back of her throat and attempts to move herself closer, but he has other ideas. The kiss tapers off and she can’t breathe by the time he puts his hand against her shoulder and psychically pushes himself away from her, leaving her in a fuzzy daze, back flat on the mattress as he moves to the end of the bed and readjusts himself.

“Wait,” she says, her voice soft and thick. She pushes herself up on her elbows and looks at the slope of his back in the dim light. “What’re you doing?”

“Leaving,” he says, but he doesn’t say it like Seth does. She can distinctly hear the regret and struggle in his voice.

“Leaving?” she echoes, sitting up and pulling her legs under her. Everything about her is warm and tingly and _alive_ , but it’s quickly wearing off and she wants more of it, so much more. “But I want you.” She says it like it’s the only reason he needs to stay.

He takes in a deep breath that makes his whole body shift. She doesn’t know how or why culebra need to breath, but he does it so often, she figures they all must do it. And then he stands, a towering figure in those glasses that had just been pressing against her skin and colliding with her nose while he’d been kissing her like she was the only air he seemed to need. “I know,” he says, tilting his head as his eyes meet her, but he gives her a small smile that’s reserved for her—and occasionally Seth, but Seth isn’t here right now, so it’s all for her. All of it. “And I really wanna stay.”

“Then stay,” she insists, feeling like a child. She feels so selfish it almost bowls her over, but she wants him. Badly. She presses her fingers against the snake bracelet and reminds herself that this was a step. A step a year in the making, but it was a step. She reminds herself that Richie probably risks a lot coming to see her and if he stays longer and Santanico finds out…who knows what would happen. But that doesn’t stop Kate from fully meaning the words. “Stay with me.”

He presses his lips together, but she can tell he’s not caving again. “Not tonight.” He shakes his head. “I will, but not tonight. I have…things, I’ve got shit to do.” He frowns slightly like he’s remembering something that he should never have forgotten.

And then he’s back to being in front of her, leaning down to cup her face in his hands and Kate instantly raises her own to slide her fingers around his wrists. She opens her mouth to say something, but he interrupts her with his lips and she forgets what she was going to say.

They both want him to stay, but he can’t. It takes every ounce of his self-control to pull away from her and a little culebra strength to remove her hands from his arms. “I’m sorry you’re alone, Kate,” he says, still holding her face in his hands. He doesn’t say anything else, but something in his eyes tells her that he’s got a plan, that he doesn’t want her to be alone so he was going to make sure she wasn’t going to be for much longer.

“It’s not ideal,” she says, as lighthearted as she can. It gains her a twitch of a smile from him before he wrenches his hands away from her, grabs his jacket off of the bureau, and pulls it on. He pushes his fingers through his hair to tame it as best as he can—to make it look like she hadn’t been running her fingers through it repeatedly only seconds ago—and looks back at her, sitting alone in the middle of the bed.

It’s not far to the door and his hand hesitates over the handle, his eyes still on Kate, who’s watching him with eyes that say she knows he has to. But she wishes he wouldn’t. Neither of them say a thing, and a second later she’s looking at the dark back of the door, her prince disappearing into the night—leaving her with a curiously warm feeling in her belly, and a snake curled around her arm.

**Author's Note:**

> There is a 99% chance I will be writing a sequel to this. Richie leaves at the end with the mindset of something like, "Gotta go kill me a five hundred year old snake goddess so I can bang my beautiful human culebra slayer" or something along those lines. So that may happen.


End file.
